Today’s Morning Buzz is brought to you by Michael Baskin, human, serving Montgomery County MD. Michael is also chief innovation officer and an executive coach. Connect with Michael on LinkedIn, Bluesky, or (for a rural setting), Instagram.
- What I’m reading: “Exhalation: Stories” by Ted Chaing / “Mindwise” by Nicholas Epley
- What I’m listening to: Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam
- A hobby I enjoy: Collecting photos of outdoors public benches…while asking questions about categories. (What is a bench?)
There’s been a lot of (morning/evening/all-day) buzz about GenAI policies these days — what do they say? Not about how we view GenAI, but about how we view people?
When a new way to boost productivity, spark imaginations, and deliver better services emerges and the policy tells us “You are not allowed to try this,” that policy speaks to humans, not just AI. When a policy, any policy, tells us “You can’t try this,” it’s speaking volumes about how we view the humans who work here.
All of our policies (and procedures and processes) have a message.
How about the policy that says you need three authorizations before ordering the supplies you need to do your job? The one that says you need two approvals before you pick up a sick kid? The one that says you can’t provide the constituent with what they need – in contrast to a certain hotel chain whose employees are encouraged to immediately spend what is needed to resolve a guest issue.
Each message tells us what is expected of us and how we are seen. Each message tells us who we are and shapes who we become. Each policy comes with valid and well meaning reasoning. But, taken together, what do they tell us?
Too often our policies tell us in government that we are not to be trusted, that we are not responsible, that we are not powerful, and that we are not experimenters.
When I was in Chattanooga, TN, we once invited a friend from a neighboring government organization into our city’s government innovation course. The two of us went for a run the next week and I was interested to hear what he learned… perhaps process maps or brainstorming techniques. He said, “One thing I learned is that the city doesn’t trust its employees.” He recounted time after time looking at the process maps of his fellow cohort members and seeing approvals that were a “yes” 80% of the time or more, in some cases over 95% of the time. If you’re saying “yes” 95% of the time, is that approval really needed?
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Government is people, too. It’s something we all too often forget. There is a human on the others side of that form.
What happens when we tell every colleague that they are trustworthy, that they are responsible, that they are powerful, and that they are innovators? What worlds might we make possible?
We unleash power when we change policy. And many of us have more power than we think to challenge procedure as is and make it better.
In Montgomery County, MD, our procurement director, Ash Shetty, made a simple change to send a message of trust. He unlocked the supply closet. For years, the policy had been that to get a pen, pad of paper, or marker you need to go through an approval process and another staff member would unlock the supply closet to get you what you needed. These were employees trusted with dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on multi-million dollar contracts, but not trusted with pens. A (sort of) funny side result: a lot of locked up pens that weren’t stolen but simply dried out. What seemingly small policy in your organization could you unlock today to send a message of trust?
As we look for more efficient, effective, and equitable government services, a good place to start is at our own internal policies and procedures.
Over time, blunt tools blunt people. Give the amazing humans of government the tools to do their jobs, and they will. Tell them they have the power — the ability to create change — and watch what they do!
There are better futures emerging, and each of us can be a part. There are models — including some like Christian Bason’s experiment at the Danish Design Center that are government-backed, if not government. Ask what your policies say — and what they can say. Challenge the policy, change the world.
Toward a just, liberating, human government!
Want to dive in further? Check out:
- “Reinventing Organizations” by Fred LaLoux (local library or available pay-what-feels-right)
- “Mission Driven Bureaucrats” by Dan “Montgomery County, MD resident” Honig
- Breakthrough Method
- Or please reach out and share how you’re building a government that respects the people of government. (There’s a community discussion here.)
“It’s no coincidence that “aspiration” means both hope and the act of breathing. When we speak, we use the breath in our lungs to give our thoughts a physical form. The sounds we make are simultaneously our intentions and our life force. I speak, therefore I am.” — Chiang, Ted. Exhalation: Stories (p. 234)